Google have entered the social networking fray with their new Buzz network. It's not the first time they've tried their hand at social networking (their Orkut network has a very respectable 100 million users), but by integrating it into...

Skittles, the little fruity sweets, have done a bit of a makeover on the Skittles.com homepage. The page now shows the real-time results for a Twitter search for "Skittles", with a floating box to tell you a little more about the page.
There are several aspects to this that are interesting. It's another massive step towards mainstream for Twitter (I bet Skittles is hoping that the service doesn't go down). It's also a massive step towards "the conversation" for Mars, which is a company that's been plagued with criticism in the past, though admittedly not as much as rival Nestlé.
In fact, although there's not been much stirring on the PETA message boards at the time of writing, it's surely only a matter of time before the people behind sites like MarsCandyKills.com start flooding the service with highly-negative Tweets.
Some call this the campaign backfiring. I don't think so. I think that it shows bravery, and a belief that the general public doesn't really care. Personally, I think far more positively about the company that it's happy to publicise its criticism, and I'll be disappointed if they cave.
Skittles.com (via @robbrown)

We've all been there - that headphone cable that takes two pairs of scissors, a kitchen knife and a bulldog clip to get out of its packet, but still manages to nearly take off your finger. Well, if Amazon gets its way, that experience will be no more - it's announced a 'frustration-free packaging' and launches today on 19 of Amazon's best-selling products.
The goal is to make it easier for customers to get to the stuff they've paid for, and it also has the side-benefit of reducing use of plastic, which sticks about for bazillions of years once discarded. Amazon are initially focusing on two things - the aforementioned plastic bubble clamshells and those with plastic-coated wires tying them in place...

I've just returned from a delightful morning with Yahoo!, who gave me a preview of all the exciting stuff they've got planned for 2009. They've innovating in several key areas, but the push is on making the user experience more social and more open.

This is three stories in one really, so I apologise in advance for the length of this post. The three things I'm about to cover are as follows: Creationists are trying to ban Spore in the USA due to its evolutionary content, video-game fans are slamming EA and refusing to buy the game due to its DRM system, and EA have released a bunch of early prototypes of different aspects of the game....